Greedy Goblin

Monday, December 29, 2014

Death penalty in real world games

Death penalty (or more correctly "failure penalty") is constantly decreasing in video games. You no longer lose levels or gear in most games like in the old times. Even in EVE you can see this trend with removing clone costs, making pod losses irrelevant.

The logic behind these nerfs is that players are more likely engage playing if there is nothing to lose. In real world games the opposite happens: players introduce "failure penalty" by putting money to the game. Placing real money bets on your cards do not change the card game itself, the rules are the same, the cards are the same regardless if there are pennies on the table or hundred-dollar bills. Yet people put money on their gaming. The city of Las Vegas was built on the idea that people put money on their games.

The reason for this is that the chance of loss make the game more thrilling and it also cleans up punks who just want to fool around. Flying a titan into battle is a greater experience than doing the same in a frigate, we saw this form the unmatched new player influx after B-R (twice as big as the one after the "this is EVE" videos). People want to play the video game where so much is on stake.

Would Las Vegas be more "accessible" if you could enter in T-shirt and play without putting bets? Sure, much more people would go there. Would Las Vegas be more profitable? Hell, no! The lolling nerds don't pay! This is what video game designers should keep in mind when they plan their "death penalty".

I recently reported CFC massacred by pirates. Maybe highsec is safer for them. Or maybe not at all.

14 comments:

Provi Miner
said...

yep you missed it, you assume something that is not a fact. Your example: removing clone costs. you assume that the failure to pay for clones make pod loss's irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. What no cost (or death penalty) did was sucker in the bitter vets. Where as before they would not caught dead in a 20 mil assault frig cause their clone cost was 100 million. Now they will and to that point you are right. However you completely miss the isk sink. (implants) yes we know you don't use them good for you but almost everyone else does use them. The older the toon the more like the implants and the higher their value. Pods loss's are looking better than ever on kill boards. Used to be a frig fight you are lucky if the pods are worth 200 mil now we are seeing 700 to 1.2 billion pod loss's in frig fights. Sorry, but this isk sink is working exactly as intended.

To sum up you see "no death penalty" in theory, I see huge increase in isk sink in actuality. Theory only works if the facts back it up, however in this case your theory is falling down.

"Death penalty" is trending downward because the amount of content in games is increasing.

Less content = must slow players down. It's no more complicated than that.

B:R , "This is Eve" influxes. This has nothing to do with risk, it's about doing lots of damage and blowing stuff up. People see these massive fights and see lots of stuff blow up in an exciting way, not lots of isk loss to the losing players.

Even in EVE you can see this trend with removing clone costs, making pod losses irrelevant.

It could be argued that with the exception of the very high clone tiers, the cost of clone upgrades were already irrelevant as they failed to keep step with inflation. And this irrelevancy is only true is you accept that cost was the real loss.

Pod losses usually mean returning to station and a long trip back to the front line for a fight (assuming no titan bridge to get you there faster, or no jump fatigue to stop you using it) - so there is still a tactical consequence. As long as your enemy can rapidly reship and continue the fight you may be at a disadvantage. When I was flying in wormhole space we had dedicated pod killers because getting them out of the hole was critically important. The cost to them in terms of isk for a new clone never entered our minds.

Further, there is still substantial loss in implant costs.. a properly implanted combat pilot can cost several hundred million to re-implant..

The logic behind these nerfs is that players are more likely engage playing if there is nothing to lose.

I suppose you could look at like that. Alternatively you can look at it as a reduction in game complexity which increases appeal. Complexity for the sake of deliberately making the game difficult (in the sense that mechanics make it actually hard to come to terms with, not difficult in a sense that it is a hard competitive game) is bad complexity and *should* be removed. Also I don't think you can call something that benefits players a "nerf".

The city of Las Vegas

Yes but the reason for playing cards in Vegas is very different to the reason you play Eve. You play cards in Vegas because you want to get lucky and win some money. You play Eve for entertainment and relaxation. There is enough potential for loss to make the game exciting (and THIS is the reason the loss exists in the first place.. excitement, not "punishing bad players"), but the motivations to play it are incredibly different. We play to escape reality, not to endure more of it.

The reason for this is that the chance of loss make the game more thrilling and it also cleans up punks who just want to fool around.

These "punks" are paying customers. As valuable as you are. Their play style is as valid or not as yours. You cannot possibly argue your way around that.

Flying a titan into battle is a greater experience than doing the same in a frigate, we saw this form the unmatched new player influx after B-R

Wrong. The IDEA of flying a titan in a battle is greater than the idea of doing the same in a frigate. Actually flying one in a heavily TiDi'd fight? boring as hell. Flying a frigate, interceptor, bomber, covops, ewar frig? Nail biting stuff. It's exciting and adrenaline pumping knowing one shot from anything is going to end your fight.

Pilots may be drawn to the game by epic fights but they stay for engaging gameplay, which small class ship fights offer.

1-) Most Gambling isn't PvP (Like Poker), but rather PvE (Slots, which represent over half of the gambling revenue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LV_Strip_%28Nevada_gaming_area%29)). This means that players don't get filtered by that pay barrier, but rather that people pay to gamble due to the illusion that they will get some real benefits – Diablo 3, essentially an elaborate slots game, failed miserably in trying to bring that to the gaming world.

2-) Most gaming actually has no defeat-penalty. Look at any local sports area, and you will see people playing Football, Tennis, etc. "for the lulz".

3-) The professional gaming scene has grown a lot these past few years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Esports_Tournament_Prize_Amounts_1998%E2%80%932014.png). There you have real defeat penalty. You also get a bunch of that in "hardcore" gaming, in the form of ranking loss.

4-) The real conclusion is that, at the end of the day, developers will probably push towards less Death Penalties for most of the players, while leaving those for the people who actually care about these things. Any old-school-style MMORPG with harsh death penalties will not only have a hard time attracting all but a niche group, but will also be unable to remove people from existing niche titles with such restrictions.

Specifically, you are confusing gambling and computer games with russian roulette

In gambling you can lose, but you can also win. If you couldn't win, then gambling wouldn't be nearly as attractive.

In compute games, the draw is not the risk, but rather the ability to play with a game system that is capable of providing an immersive experience of any nature.Bigger ships are more fun not because they involve bigger losses, but because it is much easier to have an experience of cool space captain when you are flying a Titan than in some frog.

And then there is Russian Roulette. In which, the main draw is to, indeed, remind oneself of worth of life by putting oneself in the position of potentially losing it. Eve is not that, though.

"Yes but the reason for playing cards in Vegas is very different to the reason you play Eve. You play cards in Vegas because you want to get lucky and win some money. You play Eve for entertainment and relaxation."

I'm sorry, but anybody who goes to a casino with the thought "I am going to make money" is an idiot.

The truth is that the money really is just a way of keeping score and keeping out the 'losers' who don't provide 'good fights'. What's likely to attract people to a poker table - someone who goes in and throws pennies without a sound then leaves, or a big personality with big bucks splashing about?

People don't go there to win, they go there for entertainment value. It is perhaps different for professionals but there's a reason why many people set themselves a 'limit' to how much they gamble, and will continue to play/lose even when ahead, because it's entertaining.

You are far off with the titan. WATCHING a titan fight other titans is all fun and games, but actually FLYING it is a pain. It's boring, it's clumsy and simply not fun a all. That's why titan pilots drop out so quickly. If such pilot doesn't have an alt doing something more interesting (like flying that frigate you dismiss), his gameplay is pure misery.

For most games, death penalties beyond the failure state itself is pointless. Imagine no repair costs in WoW: would people suddenly not care about wiping anymore? Of course they would care, because they still lose time. Losing gold on top is just an anachronism from EverQuest (etc) that doesn't strictly need to exist. EVE is different insofar as the penalty is integral in sinking ISK and material out of the economy, but such is not usually the case in other games.

Doesn't matter. PC gaming pre smartphones (2007) as we know it will die out due to tablet touch gaming and multiplatform developed console gaming. Nextgen and tables are a heavier influence on the gaming industry than anything else. anything older than 5 years will have to adapt and change.

Like arcades gameplay died out. What ever we rage about now will die out, fast.

The problem is always the same: catering to a broad, diversified user base. Penalties make the game more thrilling, but not all gamers want their game to be thrilling.

Let's take Diablo 3 as example: if you want you can play hardcore: once your character dies there is no resurrecting it. Would this be successful with all gamers? Absolutely not, most players would hate such an harsh penalty for dying.

So it would have made no sense to force hardcore mode to everyone, but it makes sense to offer it as an option for the niche of users interested in the "thrilling" experience.

The broader your target user demographics the more diversified gaming experience you need to offer.